Tinkering is being promoted on college campuses from MIT to Santa Clara University, as well as in high schools and elementary schools.

The blending of technology and craft in tools like 3-D printers and laser cutters has made it possible for ordinary people to make extraordinary things. And many ordinary people, living as they do, more and more in their heads and online, are yearning to do something with their hands.

“These are incredibly important mind-set for today’s world,” she says.

Music to my ears!

talks excitedly about students who have designed child prostheses. “That’s what they’re going to remember their entire life,” she says. “They aren’t going to remember sitting in an electronics lecture.”

It is about creating experiences that help students see the world as a malleable place.

Alexandra Garey, who graduated from Rutgers last year, credits tinkering with changing the course of her studies, and life: “I went from somebody who was majoring in Italian and European studies to someone who was designing and prototyping products and realizing any product that came into my head.”

“U.S. schools are very good at finding the brain-smart people,” he says. “They are also very good at finding the best athletes.”

But they are not so good at finding and nurturing people who, he said, describing himself, think with their fingers.